“Congresswoman Bustos and the DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) should be ashamed of themselves for promoting an edited, dishonest video and running advertisements based upon it,” Schilling said.

“This was bullying, plain and simple,” he continued. “I’m calling on Congresswoman Bustos and the national Democrats to do the right thing and remove this dishonest advertisement from the airwaves.”

Schilling wants the campaign to get away from disputing political ads and center more on the issues.

“There has to be some way we can have (ads) vetted through so you have independent people looking at and say, ‘This is and honest ad, and here’s the facts’ and be able to put it out,” Schilling said. “But, that’s probably never gonna happen.”

* Oh, for crying out loud. And I do mean “crying.” I think I posted the ad already, but here it is in case you missed it…

* The script…

The Sensata plant in Freeport closed and shipped off more than 100 jobs to China…

When workers in Freeport needed their Congressman, Bobby Schilling turned his back on them.

Schilling, who represented the 17th District from 2011-12, objected to the new ad Tuesday, calling it a “lie.”

The commercial doesn’t say so directly, but the Democratic committee confirmed it is referring to a September 2012 confrontation between the former Republican congressman and a few workers from Sensata Technologies at a Stephenson County Farm Bureau meeting.

Workers at the meeting demanded to know whether Schilling supported a piece of legislation and, after some back and forth that involved what appeared to be a farm bureau official, the workers began chanting “yes or no,” and Schilling was escorted by one of his campaign staff to the back of the room.

When at least some of the Sensata workers left the room, Schilling returned to the front of the room, according to a video of the incident posted at the time by Schilling’s campaign.

“They’re saying Schilling walked out on constituents. That’s a lie,” the Republican said in an interview Tuesday.

Yes, he makes some valid arguments, but his over-interpretation of the simple phrase “turned his back” is more than a little goofy.

And I have to agree with Cheri Bustos’ campaign that his idea to have “independent people” vet ads is pretty rich coming from a guy who ran a TV ad this month which FactCheck.org brutally slammed as “shamefully misleading.”

“And they did this to try to bully and intimidate and put this out to make it look like I walked out on a meeting. I believe it is unamerican and it’s the bad part of politics for anyone to do that, whether it is Republican or Democrat” said Schilling.